Internet Abuzz Over "Amazon Prime Air"

In an interview with "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that his company is working on something unbelievable - "Amazon Prime Air".

According to Bezos, "Amazon Prime Air" would work something like this:

1. You order something from Amazon.com

2. An "octocopter" would pluck your order out of a local Amazon.com warehouse and wing its way through the air to your residence. The "drone", which would be powered by eight blades, would be guided by GPS.

3. The "drone" would drop your package off at your home and make its way back to the warehouse.

According to Bezos, the hope is that this new technology would drive delivery times down to less than 30 minutes. That is, to make it clear, 30 minutes from the time that you place an order to the time that it is dropped onto your doorstep.

Bezos emphasized that the technology is not quite there yet, and that the technological breakthrough couldn't occur until the FAA puts in rules regarding the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Here is a demonstration of how the technology would work:

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"Amazon Prime Air", if it ends up happening, would obviously be a disruptive technological breakthrough that would significantly impact a number of different industries (parcel delivery firms such as UPS and Fed-Ex, to start). In addition, this would be yet another blow to the brick-and-mortar retailers - how could they possibly compete with Amazon if the online giant was fulfilling deliveries within just 30 minutes?

Would you bet against Jeff Bezos being able to pull this off? I wouldn't.